


Letters

by Sonamae



Series: Get Me The Ottoman [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Letters, Lifestyle talk, M/M, Minor Character Death, Too Much Tequila, dom/sub dynamic, pov fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3104594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonamae/pseuds/Sonamae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For three years, Newton and Hermann wrote each other letters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this and then completely forgot about it. Also as a future note, while this fic doesn't mention Newton getting his tattoos during this time, he does. He never brings them up in his letters though and I felt it wasn't needed.

 The first time Newton saw a Kaiju on screen was also the same day that his Dom died.  Carol had been the sweetest woman in the world, she was smart, funny, and living in the _wrong_ place at the _wrong_ time.  Everyone had been screaming to turn on the television, turn it on _quick_.  The world felt like it was shaking and everyone was rushing to the nearest monitor to flip it on in the lab.  He’d watched as a Kaiju rendered entire buildings with a single swipe of its arm.  
  
 Carol had been in one of those, the left one if he wasn’t mistaken.  He’d been there once on her dime for a scene they’d planned together, he’d ended up staying for two months before he begrudgingly left her for his job as a teacher.  That had been so _long_ ago, so many years of his life just _gone_ with the swipe of that creatures arm.  
  
 He’d fallen to his knees and everyone had grabbed things around him, but he’d just stared at the monitor and cried without a word of comfort from anyone.  They all thought it was for the loss of such a great city, the beginning of the end, no one asked otherwise.  No one knew he was crying because the one person who took him as he was had _died_ inside of her home, probably sleeping.  God he hoped she was sleeping, he prayed that she hadn’t been in any sort of pain.  
  
 There was always the slim chance that she had survived, but when electronic communications went down for those first six months, he gave up that hope.  She had his written address, she knew how to tell him she was okay, but he never got _anything_.  He was tired of writing letters with nowhere to send them, tired of that long drawn out silence be the only thing he knew.  
  
 Still, for all their destruction the Kaiju were beautiful, even if they’d ruined the world.  Carol wouldn’t have wanted him to dwell on her death when he knew she’d be just as fascinated by them as he was.  So he did the only sensible thing.  He pretended her death hadn’t happened and drank a bottle of tequila.  He buried himself in the study and the science and forgot why he’d even _gotten_ a Dom in the first place.  He began furthering his studies and applied to MIT.  His acceptance letter was the best news he’d gotten in what felt like years.   
  
 She’d have been so proud of him.  He drank another bottle of tequila.  
  
 On the same day he got his acceptance letter, he got an envelope addressed simply to the resident of his apartment from someone named H. G.  Assuming it was spam, he opened it for a laugh.  
  
 _‘I’m going to be boorishly blunt, which I normally never am, and admit to one fact.  That fafct being that you are the leading specialist in analytics of Kaiju, even if you aren’t that well known, but I find your reports... well,_ garish _.  I would like to do a project with you none the less, if you’re so inclined, about Kaiju Research.’_  
  
 The rest of the letter was utter gibberish, but life had all gone downhill from there.  Or maybe uphill?  He wasn’t entirely sure.  Either way he wrote back with both excitement and sassy indignation because ‘garish,’ fuck this person sideways.  No one but old stuffy British people used words garish.  
  
 Newton liked that.  
  
\--  
  
 Turns out that Hermann wasn’t British.  Turns out he was German.  Who knew.  
  
\--  
  
 Newton writes to Hermann every single week for an entire, heck he never misses a single Thursday at the post office.  The lady at the counter sneers at him every time he asks for the _‘funny looking stamp rolls,’_ but he doesn’t care.  Hermann makes him laugh and he gets a letter every other week from him, always with the request to ‘stop writing him so much.’  He doesn’t, but he still contemplates it even as he writes the next letter.  It’s retro valentine’s stamps this month, and they always look so colorful compared to the boring leaves on the wind stamps Hermann uses.  
  
 The fondness he reads in Hermann’s letters makes his heart flutter though, so it makes up for it.  He’s been so busy with his teaching and trying to stabilize his world, that he hasn’t noticed the crush on the handwriting he’s gotten.  When it hits him it’s the anniversary of Carol’s death and he can’t even get out of bed.  The first thing he does is reach for one of Hermann’s letters and clutch it to his chest.  After reading it for the forth time he realizes he hasn’t sought comfort like this since… well, Carol.  
  
 He waits several weeks and then writes Hermann a letter telling him about Carol, about their relationship and their dynamic.  A part of him knows that Hermann is probably going to write back and tell him he’s a deranged freak, if he writes back at all, but he’s on his second bottle of vodka and he hasn’t stopped crying since he started so fuck everything.  
  
 When he puts it in the mailbox the next day he feels a pull of regret, but he can’t change it now.  All he can do is wait to see if Hermann ever replies.  A small part of him hopes he doesn’t, mostly because he really doesn’t want to be judged anymore.  He’s already getting enough shit from his co-workers for liking manga and _‘shitty B-rated horror films,_ ’ and if that isn’t enough he is also getting the _‘wow do you ever get laid’_ from his _students_ of all people.  
  
 He wants someone he can confide in, someone that isn’t part of the gross working world he lives in, or the people who at the clubs he hardly goes to because they are either too hardcore or make him feel miserable.  Newton wants Hermann to understand.  Newton _needs_ his best friend to be accepting, but he’s so fucking scared that he won’t.  
  
\--  
  
 _‘His name was Benjamin, he was on Holiday when it happened.  I was his Dom and I was meant to protect him, he’d even asked me to join him on the trip but I told him no.  That was four years ago.’_  
  
 Netwon stares at the letter in his hands and for a moment he doesn’t really understand what’s going on.  It’s been four weeks since he got a letter from Hermann and he’d almost forgotten how much he loved looking at the serious script on printer paper.  This letter feels heavier than normal because there isn’t a hint of science to it, this is strictly a personal letter, the first he’s ever gotten.  He has to sit down, the realization dawning on him heavily.  He keeps reading and bites his lip.  
  
 _‘I know that our situations aren’t the same, they might not even be considered similar.  You lost someone you loved due to an alien, I lost someone I loved due to a drunken imbecile.  While the situations may differ, I can reach out and share with you the feeling of loss I know you are trying to cope with.  Some days it isn’t going to be easy, but the fact you’ve made it this far is above and beyond wonderful.’_  
  
 Netwon’s breath caught and he fought back tears.  
  
 _‘Life will move forward, you will find someone new and they will cherish you with all of their heart.  Happiness is always obtainable, even when you feel at your lowest, look to the future.  Never give up, that’s not an option for people like us.  And honestly, if I can find happiness once again, so can you.  With my greatest affection, Hermann.’_  
  
 _‘P.S. You were right, I wear sweater vests.’_  
  
 Clipped to the back of the letter was a Polaroid of a short woman with wild hair and a tall and gangly man blushing horribly at the camera.  The short woman was leaning against the other mans side as she held the camera our, her lips pressed to the mans cheek.  Her lipstick smudged against the mans face and Newton felt his chest ache.  
  
 _‘Collette & Hermann, 2012’_  
  
 There were honest to god mixed feelings going on right now.  For one, Hermann was bi, and that was rad but wow not something he had expected?  For another, Hermann cared about him, and that felt great.  Then there was the fact that Hermann had a girlfriend, and that was sad yeah, but Newton wasn’t really gun-ho about jumping on the guys dick when he’d never even met him in person, so it was cool.  There was also the factor that holy shit Hermann was a Dom, quiet stuffy Hermann with his happy cheerful sarcasm was into the same stuff he was.  
  
 He looked really happy though, and that made Netwon feel a million times better.  He reread the letter and smiled to himself, replacing it at his bedside for the letter about the theory of aliens instead of mutated sea life.  Hermann made him happy, Netwon hoped he was half as good at that as his friend was.  
  
\--  
  
 Six months later and he was drunk in a bar with his co-worker Dianne and her cousin Dylan.  He’d let slip he was looking for a Dom and he regretted it.  Dianne _knew_ people, he’d trusted her, but she had to go and suggest Dylan as his Dom.  Newton didn’t even know Dylan, but hey, he was drunk.  Why the hell not.  
  
 They talked it over in a weird offhand way, both drinking too much and knowing it was not going to end well, then they’d left together anywhere.  Dianne left fifteen messages on his phone shouting at him for taking her car without her, but Newton just deleted them.  They went to a hotel and Dylan paid for everything with a bit too much flourish for Newton’s liking, but he needed the after of this encounter more than he needed the presentation up to it.  
  
 Their scene was… _well_.  
  
 Let’s just say both of them ended up crying by the end of the night, and neither of them went home with the relief they’d so desperately wanted.  Newton stopped talking to Dianne after that, and wrote Hermann four times that week detailing how much he felt like he’d fucked up.  He got a simple enough reply, but what surprised him most was that it had been over-nighted.  
  
 _‘Don’t you_ ever _do that again.  That is not allowed.  You did not fuck up by seeking something you need, something that would make you happy.  You just went about it the wrong way.  Do not_ ever _talk about yourself like that again.’_  
  
 Hermann hadn’t even signed it.  
  
\--  
  
 A year and a half later, Collette broke up with Hermann.  Newton had never felt more furious in his life to receive an updated letter full of theories and math, and a one sentence tack on that simply said, ‘Please no longer inquire about Collette, as she has left me.’  
  
 That was it!  Hermann wrote it off as if it were an added number on his equations.  It made Newton furious, he wanted his friend to be livid.  He took scissors and cut her out of the picture Hermann had sent him and then sat down on his bed, fingers tugging at his hair.  With time he came to realize that Hermann had probably felt a ton of emotions, but he wasn’t one to share the nitty gritty bits of his life unless they were happy.  
  
 In every letter Newton had ever gotten, it was only sweetness and sarcasm.  Hermann was stern, sure, but he was so kind no matter the circumstances that Newton had never really thought about what he might be like when he was angry.  Or hurt.  Or sad.  
  
 Or lonely.  Or maybe that was just the way Newton read him because he’s never met him in person…  
  
 Without a second thought he started writing a letter.  
  
 “Hey nerd, I’m… going to… the Jaeger… Ah Kad Ah Me.  Fuck I hate spelling.  You… should… totally… join me… next year… for a… quotation marks holiday quotation marks.  Much love… you giant loser… Newton.” He looked over the letter and smiled. “P.S.  Your relatively… theory… is so dumb… it might… just… work.” He drew a small Kaiju at the bottom and folded it up to send off in the morning.  
  
 This was, without a doubt, the weirdest thing he’d ever done.  Not including the _Shinji Get in The Robot_ shots he’d done at his favorite Otaku bar, but no one walked away from those things without a hint of regret.  
  
 Newton sighed and stared at the letter he’d be sending off tomorrow.  He could only pray Hermann would say yes, he honestly wanted to see him more than he could ever let on.  Meeting a man he’d only talked to via letter for three years was pretty damn strange… but Newton felt like it would be ideal after all this time.  
  
 God he hoped Hermann said yes.


End file.
